X (Twitter) — how agent-ready is it?
The cautionary tale: pay-per-use API with a 13x price penalty on posts containing links, replies locked behind a ~$42K Enterprise tier, and two pricing overhauls in six months.
API surface — 6/10
v2 covers posting, timelines and search, but media upload only left the sunset v1.1 endpoint in 2025-26 and gaps persist.
MCP / agent protocol — 2/10
No official MCP server; agent access exists only via third-party wrappers of the paid API.
Docs quality — 5.5/10
Docs exist but lag the pricing and endpoint reality; changes repeatedly landed unannounced.
Auth friction — 5/10
Self-serve, but new developers must pre-load credits at console.x.com before a single call; OAuth 1.0a/2.0 mix persists.
Rate limits & pricing fairness — 3/10
Pay-per-use: $0.015/post, $0.20 if the post contains a link (13x premium), reads capped at 2M/month — then the only path is Enterprise at ~$42K/month.
ToS stance on agents — 3/10
API replies restricted to Enterprise since 02/2026; scraping banned and litigated; automation rules enforced aggressively.
Machine-readable output — 5/10
API returns JSON, but the web surface is aggressively bot-blocked and RSS died years ago.
Stability — 2/10
Free tier killed 02/2026, pricing restructured again 04/2026, endpoints sunset with minimal notice — no 24-month period was stable.
Sources
Point-in-time assessment — platforms change their API terms often (that volatility is itself scored under Stability).
- postproxy.dev/blog/x-api-pricing-2026 — Pay-per-use pricing incl. $0.20 link-post premium (02+04/2026 changes) (accessed 2026-07-12)
- socialcrawl.dev/blog/x-twitter-api-2026 — 2026 API state: tiers, limits, what still works (accessed 2026-07-12)
- getphyllo.com/post/linkedin-api-access-in-2026-part… — Cross-platform API access comparison context (accessed 2026-07-12)
- docs.x.com — Official API docs (accessed 2026-07-12)